Saturday, April 14, 2007

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- A video showing a German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday on national television.

The video, coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany's conscript army.

"We can no longer talk about an isolated case," said Lt. Juergen Rose of the Darmstaedter Signal, a group of current and former army officers and sergeants who independently review military procedures.

"Things like this don't happen in the army on an everyday basis, but unfortunately in recent years there have been a number of comparable incidents."

The Defense Ministry said the video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of Rendsburg and that the army has been aware of it since January.

"We are currently investigating the incident," said Florian Naggies, a spokesman for the army and Defense Ministry.

He did not identify the instructor or the soldier, who are shown in camouflage uniforms in a forest.

The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways ... Act."

The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.

Media: Then reporters wonder why people slam them for being anti-Jewish/Israel with childish results like this. I would expect this from one of those idiotic student union in college where they are too young and stupid to realize any better. But from a press union? Say goodbye to your credibility.

It takes some skill to do something that is at once inane, ineffectual, counter-productive and insulting to the intelligence. But that what the National Union of Journalists has managed to do by voting to boycott Israeli goods because of the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel".

As Craig McGinty asks , how the hell does boycotting Israeli goods benefit journalists? Dadblog jokes about the other boycotts the NUJ could go for but his underlying point is serious - if the NUJ is going to go in for this sort of posturing, how about boycotting goods from countries that really abuse human rights?

A glance down the list of NUJ motions reveals a childish fixation with trendy-Leftie causes. It reminds me of the time I was JCR President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and I was forever being mandated, after verbose motions carried by acclamation, to write to Margaret Thatcher to protest about this or that.

But that was forgivable - we were idealistic students who had not yet entered the real world. We had an outsized sense of our own importance and an impatient reluctance to bother ourselves with considering the complexities of life outside. We have since grown up.

A glance down list of motions shows that the NUJ, despite celebrating its centenary, is still an adolescent. There's a Guantanamo motion that expresses "concern" (that'll make a difference) about "the systematic violation of human rights by the US Military".

Another "applauds the advances made by the Venezuelan people and government in redistributing the country's wealth" and condemns "disinformation" that encourages "unjustified stereotypes of the Venezuelan president as a dictator who is repressing the local media".

So the NUJ is now dictating that its members should all write that Hugo Chavez is a great chap? Clear the front pages. And if you read the anti-Israel motions, you will spot a complete absence of any sense of journalistic impartiality. The "slaughter of civilians" by Israel is condemned (no mention of suicide bombings or human rights abuses by Palestinian militias, needless to say), as is the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel" and "continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hezbollah".

What kind of language is this? It is tendentious and politically-loaded propaganda that would be rightly edited out of any news story written in a newspaper that had any pretensions of fairness. Israel "defeated" by Hezbollah? That is at best debatable - it's the kind of wording smacks of a juvenile combination of unedifying gloating and wishful thinking.

Edumacation: After getting ripped for $38 million in the budget to give out free iPods, the Dems behind the idea say no mas.

Michigan legislators won't be giving away iPods to schoolchildren, and said Thursday they never intended to in the first place.

In addition, three House Democrats who were guests of iPod maker Apple in California earlier this year will reimburse the company $1,700 each in order to end a controversy that has gotten "out of control," said state Rep. Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills.

Melton said widespread reports that House Democrats were proposing to spend $38 million on iPods for every Michigan public school child were based on a misunderstanding of comments made by Rep. Matthew Gillard, D-Alpena at a news conference last week.

The proposal is to promote the use of technology generally and isn't linked to any specific technology, Melton said.

Melton said he and Gillard and Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, decided to cover the cost of their March trip to California, paid for by Apple, because media reports about the iPods and the trip were becoming a "distraction" from work on the state budget crisis.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Madrid (dpa) - The emergence of a new al-Qaeda-linked organization in Northern Africa is alarming Spain, which is concerned about Islamists' calls for the reconquest of the country they regard as a lost part of the Muslim world.

"We will not be in peace until we set our foot again in our beloved al-Andalus," al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said on claiming responsibility for an attack which killed at least 24 people in Algiers on Wednesday.

Al-Andalus is the Moorish name for Spain, parts of which were ruled by Muslims for about eight centuries until the last Moorish bastion, Granada, succumbed to the Christian Reconquest in 1492.

The terrorists will undoubtedly attempt to extend their offensive from Northern Africa to European soil, anti-terrorism judge Baltasar Garzon warned, cautioning that Spain was at a "very high risk" of suffering an Islamist attack.

The reference to al-Andalus was not the first by al-Qaeda, which has also vowed to put an end to the Spanish "occupation" of the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast.

Such announcements worry the security services in Spain, where 29 mainly Moroccan suspects are on trial for the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and injured about 1,800 people.

The bombings were mainly a reaction to the war alliance of Spain's former conservative government with the United States in Iraq, but some of the terrorists are also known to have dreamed of reconquering al-Andalus.

The bloodbath in Algiers could launch a new string of attacks in Northern Africa and Europe, including Spain, terrorism expert Fernando Reinares warned.

"I was terrified. While I lay on the pavement they kicked me and screamed that I had trampled on the Koran. Several shouted Allah-o-akbar (God is great) and also recited from the Koran," Kadra told VG.

Kadra linked the attack to recent remarks in VG where she said that the Koran's views on women needed to be reinterpreted.

Kadra said that the gang of Somali men attacked her around 3 a.m. in downtown Oslo on Thursday. A medical examination found that she had several broken ribs, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports. Kadra filed charges and was due to speak with police on Friday.

The Islamic Council Norway (IRN) condemned the attack on Kadra and urged that she pursue the matter with police.

"Behavior where one goes to physical attack on someone you disagree with violates Islamic teaching and the prophet Muhammad's sunnah (lifestyle). We strongly object to such behavior," the IRN said in a press release.

Kadra's role in a 2000 hidden camera TV documentary revealing the positive attitude of Muslim leaders to female circumcision had a massive impact on Norway, and sparked new legislation.

Nation: Jason Whitlock who gets almost unlimited credit from me for berating Scoop Jackson slams Jesse and Al as being self-appointed hucksters using the Imus case for themselves.

"....We have more important issues to deal with than Imus. If we are unwilling to clean up the filth and disrespect we heap on each other, nothing will change with our condition. You can fire every Don Imus in the country, and our incarceration rate, fatherless-child rate, illiteracy rate and murder rate will still continue to skyrocket.A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word.

If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women bitches and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.

That’s a (freaking) shame.We need leadership that is interested in fixing the culture we’ve adopted. We need leadership that makes all of us take tremendous pride in educating ourselves. We need leadership that can reach professional athletes and entertainers and get them to understand that they’re ambassadors and play an important role in defining who we are and what values our culture will embrace.

It’s time for Jesse and Al to step down. They’ve had 25 years to lead us. Other than their accountants, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who has benefited from their administration."

Read it. Surprisingly that GMA, Today show and even the View twits are pushing back against Al Sharpton.

UK: No not really, but the Guardian being the Guardian decided to take that out of a speech Blair made about the rash of black on black crime among youths the last couple of months.

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.

Mr Blair's remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.

We need to do the same in dealing with these latest manifestations of severe disorder. In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened. There needs to be an intensive police focus, on these groups. The ring-leaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation .

The black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won't stop this by pretending it isn't young black kids doing it.

The prime minister is wrong to assert or imply that this is a "black problem": the bullet does not discriminate in its effect, and neither is the black community responsible for the manufacture, supply and importation of dangerous weapons.

Point again he didn't say it was a black problem, but there was a gang culture within the black community borne out of many factors such as poverty, lack of family structure, a hip-hop/rap culture that draws the vulnerable towards it, gangs and the lure of rewards from doing crimes and acting tough...etc...etc. The biggest factor I feel is the lack of two family household and a community that in some parts hopelessly out of touch with their children.

Almost half the black children in Britain are being raised by single parents, new Government figures reveal.

A quarter of all youngsters live in one-parent families – treble the proportion in 1972, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The biggest percentage of lone-parent households is among black ethnic groups. Forty-eight per cent of black Caribbean families have one parent, as do 36 per cent of black African households.

Single-parent families are less common among Indians (ten per cent), Bangladeshis (12 per cent), Pakistanis (13 per cent), Chinese (15 per cent) and whites (22 per cent).

Nine out of ten single-parent families are headed by mothers.

Children who grow up without their biological father are more likely to be unemployed, commit crime and leave education early, according to research by think tank Civitas.

They are also twice as likely to be homeless.

Lone-parent families are three times more likely to live in rented accommodation than couples with children and are also more likely to live in homes that fall below minimum standards.

My giving up the show, I acknowledge, is too little and too late. I doubt that I'll be missed. It's depressingly easy to find female journalists who will tolerate or ignore bigotry if it means getting into the boys' club someday. (If only I were the only one.) And I'm not so vain that I think I brought something unique to the airwaves. In fact, I assume that one reason he had me on was the tantalizing prospect that I might say something scandalous or racy. That, and he and his cronies seemed to enjoy having the occasional guest they could leer at.

Once, after I was on, he and his gang proceeded to discuss my "creamy" skin and compliment my nice pair of ... "eyes." I later asked the producer to remind him that as far as I knew, my father was listening. Now I'm going to ask my dad not to anymore.

Considering I can bring up her and Jessica Cutler playing around or the fact the only reasons she got popular was being a foul mouth political gossip who joked about anal sex on a regular basis and judging by the pics willing to show off skin to get pub(nothing wrong with that). So the now pious and righteous Cox is hilarious. If she truly wants to take the high road, she got a long way to build that on ramp to it. The budget will rival the Big Dig.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Nation: The one thing that is coming out from the Duke rape case closure and Imus fiasco are the type of responses from people to self-centered and in their own echo chamber of like-minded people. The condescending white liberals, white guilt syndrome, so-called black leaders/politicians making idiots out of themselves that you wouldn't believe it if you didn't see it with your own eyes.

Here you have Terry Moran who finds this sympathy towards the Duke boys just a bit too much for his liberal tastes. After all they are rich white boys.

But perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced. They got special treatment in the justice system--both negative and positive. The conduct of the lacrosse team of which they were members was not admirable on the night of the incident, to say the least. And there are so many other victims of prosecutorial misconduct in this country who never get the high-priced legal representation and the high-profile, high-minded vindication that it strikes me as just a bit unseemly to heap praise and sympathy on these particular men.

So as we rightly cover the vindication of these young men and focus on the genuine ordeal they have endured, let us also remember a few other things:

They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers.

Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper.

During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers.

Colin Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005.

The young men were able to retain a battery of top-flight attorneys, investigators and media strategists.

As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives. There is a very large cushion under them--the one that softens the blows of life for most of those who go to Duke or similar places, and have connections through family, friends and school to all kinds of prospects for success. They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

There will be no way in this or any lifetime I would ever try to put being called nappy headed hos and falsely accused of rape in the same universe. They were put thru a year of vicious media coverage that ripped into them, their families and their lives as if to say those whiteys got what's coming to them. Thankfully they were able to hire a bunch of well paid lawyers and I hope anyone falsely accused of rape could defend themselves just as well. I don't begrudged them or feel the rest of their lives will be all great.

But to brush aside the sympathy these guys are getting as misplaced because in your liberal mind they are rich white boys is beyond reprehesible. It also calls into question your journalistic reporting if this is the type of attitude you bring to the table. As for the Rutgers team, if any of them are truly crushed by an old man talking on the radio, then they are not going to make it in the world which can be far more vicious.

Next up Al Roker who all of a sudden is a power broker in the entire NBC organization.

I am proud of the courage our president of NBC News, Steve Capus, has shown in making this difficult decision. I'm gratified by the hundreds of e-mails I've received thanking me for my stance. And I appreciated the other hundreds of e-mails I got that were less than complimentary. Why?

A line has been drawn as to what is acceptable and what will not be tolerated. A dialog has been started about race in our country. An opportunity has been created to start holding responsible those who produce and broadcast offensive music lyrics, both rap and rock, that denigrate and marginalize women.

We can use this time to really look at ourselves and dig deep to create a world that our children will be proud to inherit. Diversity, inclusion and acceptance are great goals to strive for.

For all those who think this punishment is too harsh, consider having to explain to your daughter why someone would call a person they didn't know, a "nappy headed ho". And by the way, for all those people who posit that the phrase is rooted in the black community, it is not. My childhood neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens, is a middle-class neighborhood. People keep their homes neat and their lawns mowed. I never heard the word "ho" in my neighborhood or in my parents' home. To this day, when I go back to take my kids to see their grandmother, there aren't young black men on the corner calling women "hos".

Snoop Dogg says you are full of it. Just because you grew up in a nice area doesn't mean the phrase nappy, headed, and/or hos didn't start or become popular in a certain segment of the black community as Snoop Dogg so eagerly points out. This is Al showing his age/ignorance or ass. You decide.

Then we get to my most hated sport host Stuart Scott who brings this bizzare explanation on black people using the term ho.

On ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike in the Morning show, guest Stuart Scott discussed the Don Imus controversy. Hosts Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic asked Scott whether it's fair for Imus to be in so much trouble for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" when rap lyrics frequently use such language. Scott's response was bizarre, to say the least. He said rappers who use those words "mean it in an affectionate way." Huh? It's affectionate to call a woman a ho?

According to his Wikipedia entry, Scott has a wife and two daughters. I'd love to know what context there is in which Scott would consider it "affectionate" to hear a man call his wife and daughters hos.To their credit, Greenberg and Golic both indicated that they didn't buy Scott's rationalization. It's always wrong for a man to call a woman a ho, and for Scott to suggest otherwise is insulting.UPDATE: If you have an ESPN.com Insider account, you can listen to the interview. The relevant passage comes at about the 10:20 mark, when Scott says,

"Here's the thing: There are some people who can use the n-word, who can use those words like b---- and, and the things that Imus said, and they mean it in an affectionate way. It's one of the ideas of taking something that's negative, so bad, so ugly, and making it a positive. I'm going to take the power out of that word and make it a positive. If a white person says it, he's not really doing it."

I refer to Snoop Dogg who would point out that Stuart Scott is full of it and falls into that rapper defense of saying nigga is all about love for another black person. Negro please. This is the sort of double speak that proves your stupidity in thinking a horrible word becomes a positive message only if a black person says it.

The term ho is ho for a reason. People use words to describe certain traits or the appearance of someone.

Here is a test for Stuart, go call the Rutgers team next season during the highlights nappy headed hos and see how far you get with that explanation.

hang a portrait of Coretta Scott King in the state Capitol, saying the committee's action was comparable to calling King an N-word.

Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam (D-Riverdale) also asserted that the House Special Rules Committee's action was worse than radio shock jock Don Imus calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."

"It is just like calling Mrs. King a nappy-headed (N-word)," Abdul-Salaam told reporters after the committee rejected House Resolution 376, killing it for this legislative session.

"There is already talk about boycotting in this country. We just need to really expand it to Georgia, if necessary," she said. "It is absolutely time to realize that you cannot continue to conduct yourselves in such a manner and think that there will be no repercussions."

Committee chairman Calvin Hill (R-Canton) said race had nothing to do with his panel's decision, calling King a "wonderful humanitarian."

"It is an emotional overreaction," Hill said of Abdul-Salaam's comments. "She may be under the misunderstanding that this is a museum at the Capitol. It is not a museum."

It usually takes a couple of weeks before people do this sort of stupidity to make people sick of a subject, so far its been about 5 days.

The AP reports: "The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he planned to meet with CBS and NBC executives on Thursday with a delegation of other civil rights activists and lawmakers to discuss the Imus situation and diversity in broadcasting.

'Imus is on 1,040 hours a [year] and yet they have virtually no black show hosts. That is true for other networks as well,' Jackson said. 'We must raise the ethical standard for all of them.'"

Africa: This is the classic example of Dem talk because they know there will be no action. It makes them look and feel good about themselves.

Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, called Wednesday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.

“I would use American force now,” Biden said at a hearing before his committee. “I think it’s not only time not to take force off the table. I think it’s time to put force on the table and use it.”

In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could “radically change the situation on the ground now.”“Let’s stop the bleeding,” Biden said. “I think it’s a moral imperative.”

So everyone get out of Iraq's war and go into a Sudan war unilaterally. Whatever happened with working with our international allies and the UN and seeking diplomacy? Joe Biden, master of BS talk. If President Bush even hinted at doing this Biden would reverse himself.

The problems that the PBS-WETA producers had with Islam vs. Islamists are complex. On The Arizona Republic's news pages today, reporter Dennis Wagner details many of those issues.

But much of their hostility seems to boil down to this: They could not bring themselves to declare people like Jasser "moderate" because that would mean criticizing the fundamentalists whom the Jassers of the world oppose.

As the PBS producers affirmed time and again in their letters and e-mails, who is an Islamic "extremist" and who is a "moderate" depends entirely on which side of the street you're standing. In large part, it is about "context."

Read it, especially Dr. McCloud who deliberately took footage of the movie to show to the Nation of Islam to get a reaction.

Burke said the fight over "context" and the side issue of his co-producers' politics caused a seven-month delay in funding. Then, the PBS producers hired a five-member team of consultants to review all the segments of the Crossroads series - among them a university professor who teaches a course on Islam in the United States.

That academic, Dr. Aminah Beverly McCloud of DePaul University, screened a cut of Islam vs. Islamists for a group of Nation of Islam leaders - a rather serious breach of journalism protocol, considering that the Nation of Islam was a major part of Burke's Islam vs. Islamists investigation. According to an e-mail from McCloud to Burke, "These representatives (of the Nation of Islam) were outraged at the implications here and assert that if this airs, they will promptly pursue litigation."

UK: They were getting ripped before the ping-pong footage came out, now its a full scale assault.

I repeat what I said at the outset. The 15 at least had the gumption to join up to serve their country and risk their lives. I don't believe any of them should be disciplined, though courts martial for more senior officers should be considered.

Our two interviewees should take the money and go off and do something else. They clearly aren't cut out for the armed services.

LS Turney? You tell it how it effing is. How about manning the checkout at Tesco (hat tip to Polly) or mucking out stables?

OM Batchelor? You're a chirpy, sensitive chap. Maybe you could work in a pet grooming salon or start a window-cleaning service - if you're not afraid of heights.

And the Navy? Back to the drawing board, I'm afraid. As a former naval officer and lieutenant on board HMS Cornwall, it gives me no pleasure to say that it will take a decade or two for the Senior Service to live this one down.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, just back from a trip to Syria that sparked sharp criticism from Republicans and the Bush administration, suggested Tuesday that they may be interested in taking another diplomatic trip - to open a dialogue with Iran.

The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.

"Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,'' Lantos said. "Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go -- and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.''

Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos -- a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust -- brought "great experience, knowledge and judgment" to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.

"I find the president of Iran's remarks to be so repulsive that they are outside the circle of civilized human behavior,'' Pelosi said, referring to Ahmadinejad's past comments that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map and his questioning of the existence of the Holocaust.

"But a person of Mr. Lantos' stature and personal experience is saying that -- even as a Holocaust survivor and even recognizing the outrageous statements of the president of Iran -- it's important to have dialogue. I think that speaks volumes.''

Pelosi/Lanthos are either clueless or so arrogant to think this will do anything but play in the hands of the Iranians, Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Council. No matter what Iran or any country we try to isolate, people like this think the only way to get something done is to appease. It never works.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Media: Rosie once again mistakes free speech as an absolute when person is employed by a company. Also bring up thought police, Nazi Germany. I have no doubt this is just libs protecting libs because you think Rosie, Joy and Babs would be defending this if it was Limbaugh or any conservative talk host?

Over the pond, Gary Younge brings the stupid by comparing Imus controversy with Mohammed cartoons with this mind numbing thought about Blacks in America.

"...Now the situations with Imus and Jyllands Posten, are analogous but by no means identical. There is no extreme-right, nativist party that openly espouses racist views in the US with double-digit support; Imus' indecorous remarks did not refer to a sacred prophet; there is no war being waged against African Americans that is claiming thousands of lives a week; racially motivated crimes have not doubled in the US in the last year; Imus is unlikely to receive an award for his defence of freedom next year.

Nor, to my knowledge, have there been isolated threats of violence by African Americans against Imus or MSNBC. There have been no attacks on embassies and boycotts of American goods elsewhere in the black diaspora; or withdrawal of diplomatic relations from the US.

But then most of this escalation took place several months after the cartoons were originally published. Who knows how out of hand things might have been if Imus had taken four months to apologise, as Jyllands-Posten did, if other radio hosts had believed it was their duty to rebroadcast his comments in defence of free speech, or if people had started telling African Americans that the price for remaining in the US is to accept his comments without even peaceful protest."

This is not even in the same universe and its offensive to even use it in a column to defend the indefensible behavior of some Muslims over the cartoons and the cowardly behavior of newspapers who all of sudden found respect for religion during this time. Even if Imus didn't say sorry, Blacks wouldn't riot in the streets over it or act in a such a pathetic manner.

The freedom to speak does not equate to an obligation to offend.

Wrong, Freedom to speak means there is a chance you will be offended at some point over something. You can't put limits based on the sensitivity of various groups. That freedom also means people who disagree can say so in a legal and civilized manner as it is being done now against Imus.

Monday, April 9, 2007

A French publisher said Thursday it had blurred the face of the Prophet Mohammed in painting reproduced in a history textbook after teachers warned it could spark protests by Muslim students.

The publisher Belin confirmed a report in the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which said it had digitally masked the face of the prophet in a reproduction of a 13th-century miniature painting.

Charlie Hebdo, which was acquitted earlier this month on charges of insulting the Muslim religion for printing cartoons of the prophet, published the miniature in question in its latest issue.

Belin defended its decision to blur the image in a letter to several teachers who wrote to it to contest the move.

"After presenting our new schoolbook to your fellow history and geography teachers in a number of schools, several told us that such a presentation of the Prophet Mohammed would today be perceived as provocative..." the letter said.

Belin denied it had been "under pressure to blur the image" but said the teachers had warned of "the difficulty of teaching calmly in very heterogeneous classes," in a clear reference to Muslim students.

A spokeswoman for the SNES teaching union, Alive Cardoso, attacked the decision saying it was "injustifiable to manipulate a source" and was "contrary to the work of a historian".

Media: Asking for forgiveness from Al freaking Sharpton? I never cared for the argument about Black America needing leaders and all that nonsense. But when its Al or Jesse grabbing camera time, it just seems like a sad joke.

Politics: Its just that Elizabeth Edwards doesn't really want to be next door to the other America.

"....Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, particularly recalls the time neighbor Monty Johnson brought out a gun while chasing workers investigating a right of way near his property. The Edwards family has yet to meet Johnson in person.

"I wouldn't be nice to him, anyway," Edwards said in an interview. "I don't want my kids anywhere near some guy who, when he doesn't like somebody, the first thing he does is pull a gun out. It scares the business out of me."

But Johnson defended the occasion he brandished a gun, saying those on his land didn't have the proper approval.

"I use the gun for protection, and I considered that an appropriate time," Johnson said. "Sometimes you have to take drastic measures."

Edwards views Johnson as a "rabid, rabid Republican" who refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her family, whose lavish 28,000-square-foot estate is nearby on 102 wooded acres.Johnson, 55, acknowledges his Republican roots. But he takes offense to the suggestion he has purposefully left his property, including an old garage he leases for use as a car shop, in dilapidated condition.

Johnson said he has lived his entire life on the property, which he said his family purchased before the Great Depression. He said he's spent a lot of money to try and fix up the 42-acre tract.

"I have to budget. I have to live within my means," Johnson said. "I don't have millions of dollars to fix the place."

Johnson, who has posted a "Go Rudy Giuliani 2008" sign on a fence just 100 feet from the entrance to the Edwards' driveway, has criticized Edwards for the scale of their nearby home. The property and home, which includes an indoor basketball court, an indoor handball court and an indoor pool, is valued at $5.3 million.

The Edwardses are still putting the final touches on the property, which they purchased in 2003.

"I thought he was supposed to be for the poor people," Johnson said. "But does he ever socialize with any poor people? He doesn't speak to me."

Pip, Pip and all that rot! What a nice way to make friends and show you care about uniting the country or something. Acting like a snob wins votes.

Media: Profile of Olbermann in NYMAG and he comes off as some sort of paranoid person with issues unresolved combined with delusions of grandeur. It is not a flattering puff piece as the ones in AP or Reuters.

This is the most amusing part as Stephen Rodrick captures Olbermann's show in a few sentences.

Bill O’Reilly has liberal guests on so he can skewer them. Olbermann’s visitors are affable yes-men providing can-I-get-a-witness nods to the latest gem proffered by their all-knowing host.

ESPN hate.

As an employee, Olbermann was his own kind of Worst Person in the World. His sense of superiority and caustic vibe eventually cost him gigs and friends at three networks. How naughty was he? Olbermann was the only former ESPN star not invited back for the sports network’s 25th anniversary (he’s allowed to participate on Patrick’s radio show only because Patrick promised that Olbermann would never set foot on the network’s Bristol, Connecticut, campus).

....He was fired from his first stint at MSNBC after he denounced his own show in a commencement address at his alma mater. Fox hired him to host its major-league baseball Game of the Week and then sent him home with a year left on his contract simply for being a malcontent.

Still, where some saw a brash breath of fresh air, others saw a self-righteous gasbag. And despite the show’s unprecedented success (Olbermann and Patrick were SportsCenter’s most popular duo), Olbermann was a world-class agitator. He began firing off thousand-word memos to management, lobbying on causes from saner hours for lowly production assistants to profit-sharing for ESPN employees who were helping the network generate billions. Along the way, he won a reputation as a miserable jerk. “Of all the people I’ve known inside and outside of the business, he was the unhappiest,” recalls a SportsCenter staffer. “Sometimes, at the end of the night, I’d leave early just so I wouldn’t have to give him a ride home. And it wasn’t out of my way.”

He still slags off fellow co-workers.

It’s a couple of hours before his nightly broadcast, and Olbermann is looking through boxes of mail in his Secaucus office. “Maybe this one contains Chris Matthews’s eyebrows,” he says, referring to his fellow MSNBC host. “You see them last night? Did he borrow them from Joe Pesci?”

....I’m watching from the wings with Jeremy Gaines, an MSNBC flack. “Did you hear that snort he just did?” asks Gaines. “That’s Keith’s imitation of Matthews.” Gaines then bites his lip as if to say “oops.” He tries to respin. “But they really, really like each other.”

Sorta nutty

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that when Keith Olbermann was a kid, he got the tar kicked out of him on a regular basis. And not by the football team. “I got beat up by girls all the time,” says Olbermann. “They literally posted a sign-up sheet and would take turns. I think that’s why I’ve always been such a fan of Mencken’s line, ‘Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’ I’ve been afflicted.”

....That summer, Olbermann was a man without a broadcast. He moved back to New York, and was working on a novel when he had a dream in which JFK appeared before him on a bus, his head wound dressed with plaster of Paris. In the dream, JFK had just one question for Olbermann: “Why did you leave SportsCenter?” (The novel was never published.) That summer, Olbermann spent hours tending to his baseball-card collection, feuding with the L.A. hotel, and generally nursing grudges against the world. Even longtime friends Patrick and Griffin were at loose ends on how to help their friend.

For whatever reason dislikes Anderson Cooper and thinks he could have stopped the ascension of Bill O'Reilly.

Earlier, for the sheer sport of it, I had asked him about O’Reilly: “It wasn’t until I left MSNBC in December of ’98 that Bill took second place. Seeing what he did with that and the perversions of television he’s created, I felt bad about it. I might have been able to stop this. It must be like the way Gore or Kerry wake up in the middle of the night thinking, I could have stopped this. I carry that around with me.”

By now we’re at the studio, in a makeup room, and Olbermann starts in on Anderson Cooper. The CNN anchor, Olbermann notes, recently told a Men’s Journal writer that he wouldn’t talk about his private life. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about personal life when you wrote a book about your father’s death and your brother’s death,” says Olbermann. “You can’t move this big mass of personal stuff out for public display, then people ask questions and you say, ‘Oh, no, I didn’t say there was going to be any questions.’ It’s the same thing as the Bush administration saying, ‘We’re going to war, but you really aren’t allowed to know why.’ ”

Honda of Canada Inc. is "seriously considering" stripping some life-saving safety equipment out of the smallest car it sells in Canada to meet new federal fuel efficiency ratings.

The Honda Fit does not qualify for a $1,000 rebate under the new rules, announced in the federal budget two weeks ago, while the Yaris, produced by arch rival Toyota, does.

The difference can be explained by the extra air bags, side curtains, antilock brakes and other equipment that the Fit has but the Yaris does not, says Jim Miller, executive vice-president of Honda Canada.

"If we stripped all that out it would qualify," Miller told a University of Windsor marketing class. "But $1,000 for a human life?" The Fit consumes 6.5 litres of fuel every 100 km, which is the cutoff point for the new federal incentive to buy fuel-efficient cars. The Yaris consumes 6.3 l/km and qualifies for the money.

"....Democratic leaders say the Katrina bill -- which has yet to come up for a vote in the Senate -- is just a beginning. They hope to create a huge affordable-housing trust fund, restrict predatory lending, expand rent subsidies and tax credits for low-income housing, and push the federal government back into apartment construction.

"It's night and day," said Michael Kane, an affordable-housing advocate in Boston. "The atmosphere has totally changed."

But with housing -- as with higher-profile issues such as global warming and Iraq -- the new congressional leaders are trying to balance their ideas of what is desirable with their assessments of what is fiscally and politically possible during the Bush administration. So they are pushing low-cost measures that many Republicans can support, while promising their liberal base they will do more later."

The last thing I need to see is more government built,owned,operated housing projects. It will just end up being sinkhole where money is poured in never to see any real benefit.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

"...Near the end of the speech, amid clanking silverware and the burble of table conversations, the former Navy admiral said it was not sufficient for any group just to condemn terrorist acts.

He said it was CAIR’s duty to condemn individuals or groups that commit terrorism, and he specifically mentioned Hamas and Hezbollah. “It’s the same as those who did not speak out against the perpetrators of Jim Crow laws . . . or the Holocaust,” he said.

The remark drew no reaction from the audience."

Pathetic. CAIR is nothing more than a subtle more media savvy version of the MCB in the UK.

TALLAHASSEE - The debate over immigration is primarily a federal one, but Florida's large immigrant population ensures that state lawmakers wrestle with two issues every year:

Should Florida allow students who aren't legal U.S. residents to attend universities on in-state tuition?

No.

And should Florida help the families of recent legal immigrants pay for their children's health care, which isn't currently covered by the state's low-cost health insurance program for children?

Florida shares the cost of its subsidized health insurance program for children - KidCare - with the federal government. However, Washington doesn't pay for the children of legal immigrants who have been here less than five years. So, not wanting to pay the full cost of covering those children, Florida stopped enrolling new legal immigrant children in 2004.

Depends on who is paying what and how, though socialized medicine gives me a rash.

You can read the rest of the article, same woe is me regarding the tuition stuff.

Politics: I used to think Ellison was just a smary twit, now I think he is highly naive.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress, says he returned from a high-level trip to the Middle East on Saturday with a strengthened belief in the possibility of peace if the United States is willing to provide leadership.

"If we fold our arms and turn our backs and say people have to meet conditions before we meet with them, things are going to get worse," he said in a telephone interview in a cab after he landed in Washington. "There is no doubt the United States is the world's leading power, and they know it."

How dare America asks Syria to stop blowing up Lebanon leaders, supporting terror groups, stop messing with Lebanon, stop giving and getting support from another terror group support Iran before we become favorable to them. How dare we ask the same of Hamas and the PLO! The nerve!

Ellison said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also expressed a desire for peace but doesn't admit to helping those organizations. "He has his own explanations," Ellison said. "If he claims he's not doing these things, we need an American administration that's going to verify and to verify, we need to be talking to them."